According to the US-based “Freedom House,” Kuwait’s media environment has been “long considered one of the most open in the Middle East[.]” Kuwait was one of just a handful of countries in the region that the political organization labeled “partially free” in their 2011 report, joined in 2012 by Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.*

However, this “pretty free, comparatively” label is not one all Kuwaitis would give their country’s book culture. One tweeter noted in 2010, “@fajera I get my books either from Beirut or Cairo, half of what I read is banned in Kuwait (everything is banned here)”.

After dozens — or perhaps hundreds (a list wasn’t released) — of books were banned from the 2010 Kuwait International Book Fair, The Kuwait Times quoted an anonymous publisher as saying:

In Kuwait censorship is so severe that we do a self censorship before the Kuwait book fair … We only…